WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14: It was a lovely day here in the great Southwest. Sunny, light winds, high temperatures about 70 degrees F. (Meanwhile, half the country is fighting the Polar Vortex, with temperatures way below zero. Not much hang gliding there.) Bill Cummings picked me up about 7:30 am MST and we drove out to the Little Floridas launch. There we put a fresh coat of stain on the ramp. Bill then made use of it at 1:00 pm. Conditions were light - we had to wait an hour or more before the winds came in enough to tempt him - but he had a perfect takeoff. Conditions were still light, but he found lift that took him 500 feet over launch (up to 6,000 ft MSL). Of course, he had to make some low saves as well. But he flew for almost an hour and twenty minutes, and had a perfect landing at 2:18 in the huge LZ out front. I was there with the truck, taking pictures. We packed it up and were home in Las Cruces by 4:30 pm, after another day in desert paradise.-Robin

RobinHastings wrote:WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14: It was a lovely day here in the great Southwest. Sunny, light winds, high temperatures about 70 degrees F. (Meanwhile, half the country is fighting the Polar Vortex, with temperatures way below zero. Not much hang gliding there.) Bill Cummings picked me up about 7:30 am MST and we drove out to the Little Floridas launch. There we put a fresh coat of stain on the ramp. Bill then made use of it at 1:00 pm. Conditions were light - we had to wait an hour or more before the winds came in enough to tempt him - but he had a perfect takeoff. Conditions were still light, but he found lift that took him 500 feet over launch (up to 6,000 ft MSL). Of course, he had to make some low saves as well. But he flew for almost an hour and twenty minutes, and had a perfect landing at 2:18 in the huge LZ out front. I was there with the truck, taking pictures. We packed it up and were home in Las Cruces by 4:30 pm, after another day in desert paradise.-Robin

I found my lost video files for the keel mounted GoPro for my (Bill's) flight at the Little Florida Mts. My phone line connection took over three hours to upload to Youtube. I took all day to edit.https://youtu.be/yhwtDLjeWEE

Wyatt may have closer coordinates.(Click on picture to expand picture in height.)(Picture can be zoomed with Ctrl and + (plus key)

WYATT'S LAUNCH.JPG (90.17 KiB) Viewed 2180 times

From tower to launch is 125' walk down.EDIT: Not recommended for HG launching. The PG is above the rotor at the cliff edge.Hang Gliding launches will move through the rotor since the HG is closer to the ground.

RGSA/Hawks and drivers,Robin's rules of order dictated that the plans had changed for today. Instead of going to Magdalena Rim (Matt's Mountain) Ann and he would be over at 9:00 (an hour earlier) to pick me up so that we could go instead to the Little Florida's. We rushed over in order to chase the wind. It now looked like the Florida's would work better than Mag., Rim. Once we arrived at the Florida's parking area our chasing of the wind ended and we were now chasing the ramp. The ramp had launched itself for the third time and went cross country. The 3/32" cable was not enough of an anchor and pulled apart. Estimating winds had to have been over 60 mph to have sucked the ramp off of the ground and carry it about 100 yards to the NE. We fanned out and searched for it and Robin was able to spot it. The ramp will have to work on its landings since it had to have cartwheeled in taking chunks off both ends. Ann did some field repair so that we could carry it part way back to its starting point. We will need some washers since some of the cap screws pulled through the plywood. A few wing nuts were missing and some bolts were broke. Stronger anchor cable will be needed to hold portable, exceedingly temporary, easily moveable, launch ramp. We will take Ann's advice and guard the cable from coming in contact with the sharp edges of the Aluminum angle stiffeners. PLAN "B." :Later in the day the wind was supposed to turn more SW so now that we were without a ramp we rushed over to Mag Rim.Without a portage cart Ann and Robin had to carry her glider up the 700 yards of hill to the launch at the Rim.Ann launched at 3:51 and had to deal with a right crosswind at the SW facing Rim. She was able to hold about 600' above for her flight and made her landing at 4:33 pm. (42 minutes by my time keeping.) I started her GoPro before she took off so we should be able to see her flight and good landing once she gets a chance to put it up on line.Hadley R. arrived as Robin and I were walking down to the parked Toyota at the fence. He was going to wait out the wind and see if conditions got better closer to sunset. We will have to wait until he checks in.We loaded up in the LZ just as it was starting to get dark and before we were half way home it was dark.Now we are going to take a look at tomorrows forecast and see if it will be flyable somewhere.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2017: Bill Cummings picked me up in Las Cruces about 7:00 this morning and we drove straight up to the Little Floridas launch near Deming. (Straight, but not fast - the fog this morning was amazing.) On launch we were greeted by sunshine while the distant fog banks dissipated. We put the damaged plywood ramp back together, using bolts, wingnuts and lots of rocks. It is now in place in a location about 30 feet from where it began its unscheduled soaring flight sometime last year. We were done by a little after noon, and at 1:25 I ran down the ramp and lifted off smoothly for a lovely, 45-minute soaring flight. Lots of cumulus, beautiful blue skies, temperature about 50 degrees - it was a really nice day. I had a pretty good landing, considering the switchy winds, out in the LZ a 4:1 glide from launch. Bill and I completed the workday by filling in several gullies across the dirt road, building dams in the hopes that this Saturday's coming rain will fill them in with silt. We stopped for sandwiches, and reached home base in Las Cruces by 4:30 pm. When so much of the country is in the deep freeze, a day like this is a privilege indeed!-Robin